He tried to look hurt. He wasn’t very good at it. “Do you really think I’d do that?”
“You’d blow up the Girl Scouts building.”
“Do you really mean that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I snapped. “And if I could think of something more sacred, I’d have said that.”
“Do you want to hear what happened?”
“I know what happened. He fell and almost killed me.”
“You were knocked unconscious—”
“I know I was knocked unconscious.”
“It’s a miracle it wasn’t more serious, you know. Arnold—”
“I’m grateful—grateful I only sustained injuries to the head, neck, shoulder, and ankle.”
“What about Tucker?” he said defensively. “He could have broken his neck. And you broke his fall.” He paced. “Don’t you see?” he said excitedly. “You saved the life of the President of the United States. You ought to be proud, Herb. How many—”
“Please. What about this?” I gestured with my neck toward the press release.
“That?” he repeated.
“Yes. This tissue—this industrial broadloom carpet of lies. What about it?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I thought it was pretty good for the middle of the night.”
He grinned. He was genuinely, professionally proud of himself. That was what made Feeley innocent, no matter what outrages he perpetrated. I lay there pondering this, and my anger dissipated somewhat. Perhaps it was the medication. I could feel the fight going out of me. Being in politics requires an awful lot of resignation.
“He wants to see you,” said Feeley. “I think he feels bad about what happened.”
“Well, he ought to,” I said. “He ought to feel extremely bad about what happened.”
“Great. I’ve got it laid on for eleven tomorrow. We’ll do pool coverage. You don’t want a lot of cameras and reporters in here.”
27
SAMARITAN
Am appalled by what is going on on the road.
—JOURNAL, SEPT. 28, 1992
The President profited greatly from my injury. As Feeley had predicted, the American Red Cross gave him its Great Samaritan award. Indeed, by the time the whole hubbub had died down, he had received twenty-two such humanitarian awards.
I was trotted out at these wretched award banquets like the March of Dimes child. At the appointed moment the spotlight would be turned on me and I would struggle to my feet, with my crutches and clavicle brace, and fawn gratefully in the direction of the President. Feeley called it “dynamite photo op.” I called it unseemly.
One Friday afternoon we were about to fly out to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where the President was to be given another award for nearly killing me. I refused. I couldn’t go through with another. There was a commotion, calls from Tucker/Reigeluth campaign headquarters saying it would cripple the Iowa effort.
“Codswallop!” I said.
Feeley soon got into the act, begging me to go. I threw my crutch at him. Finally the President called.
“Herb,” he said, “I hate doing this as much as you do.”
“I doubt that,” I said. I had grown more independent of mind and outspoken since the Snaggle Tooth affair.
“Don’t do it for me. Do it for us.”
“You’re appealing, I presume, to my patriotism?”
“I’m appealing to your sense of job security.”
“Since you put it that way,” I said huffily, “I will definitely not be attending tonight’s banquet.”
For one consequence of the whole deception was to guarantee my job security. It would hardly have helped the President’s image to fire the “indispensable aide” whose life he had so gallantly saved.
“Herb, it’s all laid on. Feeley says this sort of thing really goes over great out there. We’re up three points.”
So I relented, as I always did with the President, and went to Council Bluffs. It was an especially vulgar affair. To this day I break out in a rash when I hear the quotation “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
The President sought to keep me happy during this period of public humiliation by giving me additional duties and responsibilities. One of those included “riding herd”—as he put it—over the staff. It proved to be an almost full-time job.
My first suggestion was that Lleland donate his yacht, the Compassion, to some charitable refugee organization. Needless to say, Lleland became enraged at the idea and told me to mind my own business. Feeley leaked word to the Post that Lleland was planning to give it to Ecuador for use as a hospital ship. He was forced to deny “an unofficial report” that he was giving his pleasure yacht to a humanitarian cause.
I kept close tabs on Charlie Manganelli those days. There had been the incident during the Democratic convention when he had threatened a reporter with bodily harm after the reporter had made disparaging remarks about the President’s acceptance speech.
I had wrested speechwriting away from Withers—another payoff for attending those miserable award banquets—so I was able to keep a weather eye out.
Charlie’s rhetoric had become fairly vehement. In one speech he referred to Mr. Bush as a “twit.” I was all in favor of a vigorous campaign offensive, but this simply exceeded the bounds of good taste. I sent it back with the comment “Too strong by half. Change.” He sent it back. He had changed “twit” to “twat.”
I said, “See here, Charlie, we can’t call a former Vice President either a twit or a twat. What’s gotten into you anyway?”
“About half a pint of Jim Beam. Change it to fuckhead if you want. Come on over’n have a drink.”
“No thank you,” I said pointedly.
“It’s after six.”
“Don’t you think you ought to lay off the sauce, Charlie? At least during the campaign.”
“Nah,” he said. “I write great, drunk. Listen to this. ‘Let us join arms, not make arms.’ ”
“Very nice, Charlie.” Time had called him “a young Ted Sorensen with a dash of Jimmy Breslin.” Lately I feared Caliban was in danger of overwhelming Ariel.
“Fucking poetry is what it is. We’ll use it in the Evangelicals speech Thursday.”
“They’re hawks, Charlie.”
“Right. I’ll throw in something about plowshares.”
“Whatever,” I said, “but no more name-calling.”
“I’m just tired of hearing those douche bags blame everything on us,” he said. “Every time some piss ant country gets invaded by Soviets, it’s our fault.”
I had to agree with him in principle. Bush had set the tone of the campaign with his blistering attack the day after Labor Day, calling the Great Deal a “Raw Deal” and the President’s cabinet a “collection of spivs and drones.” (This was especially insulting to the many highly qualified ethnic minorities in the cabinet.) He had criticized the President for refusing to send troops into Chiapas to help the Mexican government there put down the insurgency. He’d blamed us for the Soviet invasion of Pakistan, denounced the STOP Treaty as “non-verifiable”—whenever Republicans don’t like something, they call it “non-verifiable.” Pausing only to pronounce our tax policy “Marxist,” he criticized the turnback of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay as “pandering retreatism” and the introduction of Coast Guard user fees as “undemocratic.” He ended with his ominous reference to the Bermuda crisis: “I do not intend to stand by while another American vacation spot is turned into a Soviet satellite.”
I suspected that Bush’s dislike of the President was personally motivated. When he was Governor, Mr. Tucker had declined to attend the funeral of C. Fred Bush, the Bush family’s cocker spaniel. (I had urged him to go, but he refused.)
Our chief advanceman, Leslie Dach, was showing his customary admirable zeal, but we could ill afford another episode such as the time he took it on himself to have the U.S. Fish and Wildlife dump 15,000 rainbow trout into the Allagash River a day be
fore the President’s annual fishing trip.
He was also insulting so many people in the line of duty that it was necessary to revamp our CAS (Computer Apology System).
To get some idea of what dealing with a White House advanceman is like, imagine someone bursting into your house at seven o’clock on a Sunday evening and telling you that you and your family will have to move into the basement for the next two days; that the dining-room walls will have to be knocked down for security reasons; that the dog will have to be kenneled, the walls repainted, the staircase widened, bathrooms added, the children farmed out to relatives; that part of the roof will have to be removed to accommodate the communications equipment; that you will be required to feed 450 people breakfast; and that the buzzing noise is the dogwood trees (the ones planted by your grandfather) being chain-sawed off at the stumps because they might block NBC’s view of the pantry window. Advancemen are, by nature, not popular.
Our apology form now read:
Dear
The President has asked me to apologize profoundly for the unfortunate episode involving Mr. Dach’s handling of (1).
He especially regrets the fact that (2).
He wants you to know that he has spoken to Mr. Dach, expressing his disappointment that such a (3) as yourself would have experienced such (4).
At the same time, he hopes you will understand the enormous pressures of Mr. Dach’s job, knowing, however, that no matter what its demands, behavior such as his has no place in the Tucker administration.
With warm personal regards,
Herbert Wadlough
Assistant to the President
and Deputy Chief of Staff
One typical letter went out with the following insertions:
(1) the California Club luncheon
(2) your wife was spoken to in such a brusque manner
(3) outstanding California state legislator
(4) personal humiliation
I would choose the insertions and then have the letter written out in longhand. I think people appreciate that personal touch.
A campaign is a time of intense fraternization. You spend six, sometimes seven days a week putting in eighteen- and twenty-hour days with the same group of people. Invariably, romances form aboard the plane. I understand this. It is human nature. But eventually it became clear that things were getting out of hand.
Because of my injuries, I did not travel aboard Air Force One until late in the campaign. Joan moved back to Washington temporarily to help me during my recuperation. When I finally did “go out on the road,” as they say, I was struck by the youth and attractiveness of the volunteers who manned the hotel staff offices.
How wonderful, I said to myself, that so many young and attractive people should be getting involved in politics. It seemed a bit odd that they were entirely female, but the Democratic party has always been in the forefront of the women’s movement—unlike the Republicans—so I did not give it further thought.
One morning at six a.m. in Kansas City the real reason for this abundance of youthful pulchritude became clear. I was limping down the corridor of the Hyatt as one of the volunteers emerged from one of the rooms, wearing the shortest nightgown I have ever seen. I smiled at her and wished her a good morning. Even at the early hour I was taken with her freshness, her blond, tousled hair, her milk-warm voluptuous body.
Shame on you, Herbert Wadlough, I chuckled to myself. If Joan were here, she’d pinch your ear.
As I was shucking off these idle thoughts, I chanced to notice whose room it was that this sex kitten had emerged from. (The campaign always put name stickers on doors.) Bamford Lleland IV! Chief of staff to the President of the United States and “devoted” father of three.
Wouldn’t Mrs. Lleland be interested to know? Of course I never told anyone.
I continued on my way to Feeley’s room and knocked.
“What? Who?” came the voice from inside his room.
“It’s me. Let me in.” I was only fifteen minutes early.
“I’ll meet you in the staff room.”
“No. I need to talk to you.”
“I’m in the shower.”
I’d been in his room the night before, and I happened to know the bathroom was right by the door. His voice was coming from the bedroom. He was no more in the shower than I was in Cleveland.
“Is something wrong?” I demanded. “Why don’t you let me in?”
“I’m getting dressed.”
“For heaven’s sakes, I’ve seen you without clothes before.”
“Go away,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the staff room.”
It is not in my nature to spy, but I positioned myself at the end of the hall where I could see the door to his room. As I was standing there, another volunteer emerged from another room, carrying her shoes, and tiptoed down the hallway. There was no need to tiptoe on the thick carpet—it was probably a conditioned reflex she had learned in front of her parents’ bedroom door. After she’d rounded the corner, I hobbled down to see whose room she had just left. To my horror, it was that of a very senior White House official.
This was outrageous! Were we running a bordello or a campaign?
I renewed my hallway vigilance. After ten minutes Feeley’s door opened. I recognized her immediately. She was the kind of person you remembered. I’d met her at a Young Democrats reception. She bore a resemblance to the actress Annette O’Toole. After she had disappeared into the elevator, I stormed down to Feeley’s room and banged on the door loudly. This time he opened it.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” I hissed.
He pretended not to understand, but I was having none of it.
“Good to have you back on the road, Herb,” he said with pronounced weariness.
“Sorry! Sorry to cloud your sexual horizons! It’s just that I thought we were trying to re-elect the President.”
“I’m working my ass off. What do you want me to do? Sleep with Republicans?”
“Your extramarital affairs are no concern of mine.”
“Then why, Herb, are we having this conversation?”
“Suppose she’s a spy? Suppose she’s working for the Bush people?”
“No, no, no. She worked for us in ’88.”
“When she was in the eighth grade?”
“Go away, Herb.” He finished knotting his tie. “Remember the Golden Rule,” he said. “Don’t fuck anyone on your staff. But if you start”—he winked—“don’t stop.”
On the way home aboard Air Force One, I called Rob Dickinson, coordinator of volunteers at Tucker/Reigeluth. I told him that hence forward he was only to use women volunteers over forty years of age, or males. “No more of this teenage fluff,” I said. I was in no mood to trifle.
The change was noted immediately, and my heavens, what a great gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. You’d have thought I’d ordered everyone to wear chastity belts.
It did nothing for my popularity. People started calling me “Jonathan Edwards.” Feeley said it was having a “disastrous” effect on morale. I told him it was having a far less disastrous effect on morale than a tabloid headline on the order of
COEDS VOLUNTEER
MORE THAN TIME
ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL
BOOK SIX
CRISIS
28
WE HAVE A SITUATION
Spending most days in Sit Room. Wonder if air there healthy. Will look into.
—JOURNAL, OCT. 9, 1992
At 4:54 a.m. on Wednesday, October 7, my phone rang. It was the duty officer in the Situation Room at the White House to say that the U.S. Naval Air Station on Bermuda was “under attack” and that the President had called a meeting of the Emergency Situation Team (EST) for six a.m.
Groggily, I slipped on my clavicle brace. It’s what they give you when you’ve broken your collarbone: a harness contraption that keeps your shoulders straight. It was soaking wet.
“Joan,” I said, “why is my clavicle brace soaked?�
��
She told me that she’d washed it the night before.
“Well, why didn’t you dry it?”
She said she hadn’t put it in the dryer, thinking the elastic might melt.
There was nothing to do but put the wretched thing on. It was an exceedingly unpleasant sensation.
After searing the inside of my esophagus with a hurriedly gulped cup of scalding coffee—I was now drinking coffee—I had collected myself. The car arrived, and I sped off in the pre-dawn darkness.
On the way in, I reflected on the developments that had brought Bermuda to a boil.
I am not a colonialist, or a neo-colonialist, but I fervently wished Great Britain had not chosen to expel Bermuda from the Commonwealth. The status quo in Bermuda was pleasant enough: overemployment, full integration, bicameral legislature, a vigorous tourist economy. Her Majesty’s government made a great to-do about how it desired her former colony to enjoy full self-determination, but the real reason was economic: Bermuda was costing the Exchequer too much in subsidies.
“Liberation,” as it was exaggeratedly called, emboldened impetuous and extremist elements within Bermuda. With the benign specter of British authority removed, these elements quickly coalesced under the leadership of Mr. Makopo M’duku and all hell had been breaking loose ever since, beginning with the incident on the golf course several years earlier.
M’duku, whom a National Security Council officer had nicknamed “M-and-M,” advocated expropriation of all white-held property, abrogation of the 1941 agreement between Britain and the U.S. whereby America had established her naval bases on the island, and abolition of the island’s sweater retail industry, which M’duku, ardent cultural nationalist, was said to regard as demeaning.
At the White House the atmosphere was charged, electric. The corridor outside the Situation Room was crowded with admirals and Marine colonels. The smell of bacon, eggs, coffee, and fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits was in the air. I’d called the mess and told them to prepare emergency breakfast for 5:30.
The White House Mess Page 19